Where Am I?
by scifilover101
Summary: A man gets hit by a car...and everything changes for him.


Where Am I?

Do you like the Twilight Zone? I always loved the Twilight Zone as a kid. As an adult, it kind of lost my appeal. But I never thought I would actually be living it. It started out as any normal day, I was just walking along the street, everything was normal. Then, my vision blurred. I fainted in the middle of the street and was hit by a car. I woke up in a hospital.

"Who is the president of the United States?" a black nurse in a blue uniform said, holding a chart.

"Albert Cornwall."

"What is the year?" she asked.

"2054."

"Okay. Let me get the doctor, you just wait here."

I don't think that she meant for me to overhear this, but I heard her say, "I think this man needs to go to the mental hospital; he seems very off."

Unfortunately, I really did need to go to a mental hospital. I went into my grey room that had an elderly looking man in it, although he was sitting in the dark, so I didn't the details of his face. "Hello, I am Bill Richard," I said. "And I am Albert Einstein." I tried not to roll my eyes, knowing that I was not completely myself either.

"So, what do you do around here?"

"I tell stories," he said. "Would you like to hear my stories?"

"Sure. Why not?" I said, knowing there was nothing better to do.

Forever

The thirst was unquenchable, like being in the desert times running times infinity. Shannon Cramer heard people screaming and wailing in pain, but the complete darkness hid them from her, she was utterly alone. Every inch of her body felt as though it were on fire.

She jumped out of bed and slammed the alarm clock which said 6:30 AM in green letters. "It was just a dream; it was just a dream!" she ran downstairs, "Mom, mom. Do we have anything for breakfast?" "Yes, we have the oatmeal and orange juice, I know that you are very health conscious." She sat at the green table next to the counter and slowly ate her apple oatmeal. "Shannon, Shannon," Her brother began to tease her. "Stop it Timmy! Can't you see I'm in a bad mood! Why…" Timmy looked like he was about to cry. "I'm sorry Timmy; I didn't mean to snap at you; I just had a horrible nightmare; I'm so sorry," she said, rubbing her brother on the head.

She headed on the bus for Littleton High School. Jessica, one of her tormentors, bumped into her sending her books and papers flying everywhere.

"Hey, watch where you are going, klutz!" Katie, another one of my tormentors said, laughing. "You are so…." Katie began to add.

"Is everything alright here?" a man with blue eyes and glasses said; he looked like a teacher or a teacher's aide.

Katie smiled, saying, "Yes, everything is ok. We were just helping Shannon clean out her locker."

"Well, its best that you girls get to class, the bell is about to ring," the man said. The girls walked off to class.

"Hello, I am Mr. Smith; I am the new history and literature teacher," the man from the hall said, writing his name on the board.

Shannon's life pretty much went the same day after day, going to Littleton High School, being bullied and having Mr. Smith rescue her. It hurt so much, having them tease her. Mr. Smith understood this; he tried to praise me as much as he could in front of the class. She tried to drown out the world when she was depressed; one of the ways that she helped herself get through the depression was by imagining herself out of it by reading. Through the wonderful land of my Gameboy, she found freedom and forgetfulness of her pain because of the electronic stimuli.

Shannon picked up her pencil and wrote, _"…I mean it's just death, right?"_ in her journal, pouring out all the hopelessness in her soul. What reason did she have to fear death if life was so horrible? Every day, she woke up to the same heart wrenching emotional pain. Tomorrow, far from being Annie's optimistic day away, was just something she had to get through.

Shannon didn't care about what happened. What would anything matter? If nothing would ever get any better, then what did it matter what happened; she was just going to be miserable anyway. To her, even physical torture could never come close to the pain that she was battling with inside. Ironically, she still felt guilty for not caring about other people.

As her depression worsened, death seemed more and more like a friend and suicide something her soul lusted over, and her heart cried out for the grave. Her life was so horrible that she had wished that it had never begun. She was standing in the kitchen thinking, _What's the point in life?...Then after living in Hell for a really long time you finally get to have some peace because you're dead and in Heaven."_ She saw a knife glimmering in the sunlight. _What if I went to Hell for committing suicide?_ she thought. _Earth basically is Hell without the fire_. _What if there is nothing after death? Then I'd be better off because the living can know that they're dead, but the dead know nothing. _I It was as if her arms were frozen. She was so busy staring at the knives that she didn't hear my mother come in. "Shannon!" she gasped. "Have you been off your medications again?" "Mom…I just can't take life. School is so hard and I get bullied all the time."

The next day, Mr. Smith read a book that dealt with the issue of suicide. Shannon sat down on the bean bag chair and looked with anticipation at Mr. Smith. "People who are depressed shouldn't kill themselves. He seemed to look in her direction, "What if Sara killed herself but she actually found a cure for cancer?" That actually startled me. He had looked in my direction, as if he knew what I was going through. Was it just a coincidence that Sara was sitting next to me? He furthermore said, "Think of all the greats who lived in history; Mother Teresa, Einstein, Isaac Newton. What if they all committed suicide? Then we wouldn't have any of the contributions they made. Additionally, there are some that say that suicide can lead to Hell."

His words burned deeply into my heart and soul.

Shannon's mother made her go to the psychiatrist. Because of her hopelessness, she thought that no one would help her; she was the only one who could help herself by killing herself. God had the power, but wouldn't help me. She wrote in my journal, "_I am all alone in the world but that is okay because what can other people do?_"

However, she found out just how wrong that was. She went into the office of a tall, Indian looking man with short black hair, dark eyes, and dark skin.

"Do you want to commit suicide?" he asked me.

"Yes," Shannon said, calmly.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because life is pointless," she said and began sobbing.

Her psychiatrist tried to comfort her by telling her that the new medication that he was putting her on would make me feel better. Eventually, the medication did help and she didn't mind going to see him.

"Do you like your brother?" my psychiatrist asked.

"Yes, sometimes," she replied.

"Sometimes?" he jokingly asked, making me smile.

"I think that you are getting better. You smiled two times today, before you just cried." And, eventually I got all the way better.

Shannon got up at 4:00 AM on the last day of my 12th grade year. "I'm not tired," she told Mom as she walked to the car. "That's because you're excited," Mom said as she too walked over to the car. They met her best friend, Sara, and her parents at the airport.

"Oye," a short, tan man with black hair said. "Oye," he repeated.

"Tomalos?" he asked, pointing to my suitcase.

_You want to take my suitcase?_ she thought, somewhat appalled and confused.

Later, they arrived at the hotel. The hotel had nice restaurants. For breakfast, they would eat at a buffet full of wonderful food, including donuts. They also ate lunch at the buffet. At night, they went to specialty restaurants like an Italian restaurant. They also went to a Mexican restaurant, and there were men in sombreros singing in Spanish. Shannon got squid from a Japenese restaurant. When she bit into it, it was like eating rubber because it felt kind of bouncy like rubber.

We also went to the Mercado. I got some souvenirs there, including a key chain and necklace. "Cual quieres?" a woman asked me when I was in a store looking at necklaces. I replied, "Lo mas barato," meaning I wanted the cheapest necklace.

One year later. Shannon was attending Meramec University. A man jumped in front of a young man with brown hair and blue eyes and glasses walking down the hall.

"Hey do you have my homework yet?"

"Um…I'm sorry Rick."

"Well, sorry doesn't cut it. I want…"

"Is something wrong here?" Shannon asked, remembering how it felt to be teased.

"What is this, your girlfriend?" Rick asked.

"No; I don't even know her. But thank you, though."

She found out that his name was Jim Kirk, which was probably why he got teased all the time. We studied business together.

**Five years later **

Shannon went into a business networking event, with tables around the small room. She walked over to JMK Enterprises. "You surprised to see me?" Jim asked, smiling. "I'm now a rich business owner and I think I would like to repay you." So, he took her out to dinner. It was very fancy. Soft music was playing. The table cloth was draped on the table.

"So, tell me a little about yourself." Jim began.

"Well, I've been working as an accountant."

"Do you like your job?" Jim asked, sipping coffee from his white mug.

She picked up my fork and ate my peas from my white plate, thinking.

"Well, it does get a bit boring sometimes, and I am not paid as much as I wish I could get paid."

"Would you ever consider working for me? I'm sure that I would know how to pay such a beautiful and talented woman as yourself."

Shannon blushed, looking down at my plate, smiling. "You know, I might just want to work for you."

After working for him for three months, we fell in love and got married. Together, we set up a fund to find a cure for cancer, which we did. We also had a son named Tommy.

Shannon's blonde haired son Tommy was lying in his bed in his dinosaur pajamas. "I love you Mommy," he said. "I love you too, Tommy," she said, kissing him on the head. She laid in her bed sighing. Her life was perfect. Not only had she found the cure for cancer, but she also won the Nobel Peace Prize and was writing a book about her achievements and planned on doing a book tour. As she was closing her eyes, she was back in the same nightmare. But she was too tired to wake up out of it…

She heard a voice laughing. "Fool; this is no dream. That other part, that was the dream, the alternate universe. I wanted to show you what you could have done had you lived." "Where..where am I?" "You died, you fool." "But how, how did I die?" "In reality, you took your own life that night." So that was it, my fate was sealed, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was trapped in Hell. Forever.

"Wow, that is a depressing story; I'm just glad that they are not true; just like you are not really Albert Einstein."

"They are true, just like the fact that I really am Albert Einstein."

"Einstein's been dead almost a century."

He gave me a bizarre look and then laughed, "I hope that is not true." When I looked at the man in the light, he looked so much exactly like Albert Einstein that I knew it must be him. "No…" I said, running out of the mental hospital, stunned.  
I ran out of the hospital, and into a graveyard. A tombstone caught my sight it said Shannon Cramer 1922-1954. I saw a man, crying at the tombstone. "Oh Shannon, it's only been a year, and it's felt like an eternity." It had only been a year? But that would mean that it was 1955, nearly a century before my own time!

What was this? Had I traveled back into time? Was I dreaming? Was I in a virtual reality machine? Or was I really insane? Why was Albert Einstein in an insane asylum? It doesn't really matter because there are no answers…in the Twilight Zone.


End file.
